Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Bugman, mmorpg.com member v. Mourning Devolpers?
I recently made a post on the mourning boards about why so many devolpers/mods are coming over to the mmorpg.com and making threating comments toward users. Here is my post: http://www.realmsoftorment.net/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=18379
Orginal post by bugman- http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/load/forums/loadforum/522/loadthread/36201/setstart/1/loadclass/180
Bugmans addiational post and egomancers threat of suing-http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/setstart/51/loadthread/36095/loadforum/522/loadclass/180
Resonse:
quote:
Originally posted by SirBoozer
I would like to ask why mods for mourning are coming to the mmorpg.com boards and threating people(to sue them) for critizing the game. We have 2-3 mods over there now, and as a long time memeber of mmorpg.com is it really annoying that you guys think you can rule over there too. Yes, most at the site think your a joke, but comeon. http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cf...s/loadclass/180
Thank you.
Before you came in here to post this, you should have made your homework first.
The "threatening" you're talking about was made by egomancer and it was next to an user in there which wrote about a credit card ***** post. It happens that I met Ego this night and he told me exactly what was that about, so I know very well what happened in there.
That user said he WENT and SAW at a guildmate friend of his, on that friend's computer, some kind of evidence that we banned him from our forums and then we charged his bill for Mourning.
As that is a serious accusation which can do a lot of damage to our game's image, and most of all, is totally untrue, Ego was talking to me thins night that he's seriously thinking to sue that person for false claims in order to stop all this madness with billing **** accusations which atm fills up most of mmorpg.com Mourning threads.
We had enough of these and we got sick of all those false claimings. Every sane minded business mand would have done the same in order to protect his own image. Can you really blame us we want to put it into a legal end to all these false claims swarming around the net once and for all?!!
And more, consider this a warning caused by the fact that you rushed to came on our boards making other false claimings regarding our mods threatening legal suits for "criticising" the game, as all my above explanation is standing for.
__________________
by Tiamat
What do you guys think about the devlopers getting bugman?
Comments
...It should be "forum user" of mmorpg.com. An "mmorpg member" would be someone that is connected to the site itself and/or is legally responsible for the site.
The whole spread false rumors in a chat room/forum has been up in US court before (was about invstments in companies with/regarding stocks). The verdict was simply put: "If you listen to unknown people online & make investments according to them you are ******".
So far mmorpg.com has not made a report regarding the ton of rumors in the forums, also in the ToS mmorpg.com does not stand for whatever forum users post.
[Edit: forgot to add that courts in most/rest of the world do not even consider "internet rumors" to be something that should be investigated unless its from a company/state/country etc.]
It should be know I deleted my post with in 7 hours of them being up finding out i was missinformed by a guild member didnt whant me to leave are current mmorpg. I have also offered a public appology to the team of devs making mourning. If they do sue me itll cost them more in paying there lawyers then is in my bank acount. So I dont think egomancer will do it. Im still waiting to hear from egomancer on how he would like this public appolgy that he should get. He has every right to be more then upset.
I would advise people to read the complete thread before jumping to conclusions and agreeing with the topic starter...
I am not in the beta of Mourning nor will I ever play the game. It is not because of all of the "bad" press it has gotten here or anywhere else. It is the constant threats I see from representatives of the game!
To all of the developers - if you care about your game shut the hell up! You clearly do not know American law nor that of most western nations if you think you can sue anyone over this. You actions simply encouarge others to bash your game. In fact I am about to do it just to prove the point that you cannot do anything to people on the internet.
US law is clear as everyone has posted. The "internet" is considered one large conversation by the Supreme Court. So libel and slander laws are not going to apply. So what are you going to sue people over? You actions make this game look like a joke. If you have hope of getting anyone to play it I would really suggest that you get your panties out of a wad and grow some common sense.
Well said, Julian.
Facts: There are much more then 2-3 moderators here, I can tell you! (I aint bad...not really)
MMORPG.com staff is professionnal, would -almost- never publicly talk ill or in any prejudicable ways toward any devs group or game, especially not if they are building a MMORPG.
Tiamat seem to take everything quite personnally and overeact at the direct contact of ''customers'', pubicly insulting the MMORPG.com board with nasty qualifications. If anything, the staff here is unaware of Tiamat issues with some ''users'' of this board.
Kinda funny, I am used to watch this staff deal with monsters like SoE or Blizzard, and they are the little buggers that find it hard to reach what they want to reach...however, Mourning get me the feeling they are tiny and find it hard to reach MMORPG.com staff.
Leave Tiamat to developping, he is not a good PR which is fine for an open PvP game. On a scale where you have NCPann at the other end(I tried subtlely to aggro her to no avail), I would say Tiamat would be the first value above 0 hehe. If you play fine, he is decent and courteous, usually...so above 0!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
+-+-+-+-+-+
"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
-+-+-+-+-+-+
"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
News UPDATE:
ParaTropper, a Mod of mmorpg.com has posted.
We are far from "being in bed with IGE" as you put it, they pay advertising and thats the only link between us. Also their advertising was affected by a past case involving Enotts where we limited advertisement space to 15% for trading websites due to a member vote.
As for our forums thinning down to farmers and cheaters Id also disagree with that, in fact our forums are getting a rapid increase in members and posts as time goes on. As for farmers and cheaters... well we have a zero tolerance policy for anyone discussing cheats and I dont believe we even have a population of farmers that visit our website and are vocal about it.
Just as a note we have indeed been contacted by a Developer of Mourning trying to obtain a members real name and address. However a court subpoena would be required for such information.
Spoon is also being flamed on the board.
http://www.realmsoftorment.net/forums/showthread.php3?s=30208172b42257e7fe14cb512cd4d622&threadid=18379
Reading that link, nice post Roin.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Relent
"zero tolerance policy for anyone discussing cheats..."
That's a rather absurd statement coming from a site that's in a financial partnership with IGE.
You can't have it both ways. Mmorpg.com is profiting through association with a company that's in the business of organized cheating at the expense of legitimate MMO gamers. You should be the first target of your own hypocritical policy. Zero tolerance for anyone else, but 15% tolerance for yourself huh?
You may still get a stream of newbs because you squatted on the good domain name. But as long as you're buddied up with IGE, the only serious gamers you'll ever get any loyalty from are profit farmers and cheats.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MMORPG.com is not partnered with IGE. Are you people all just stupid or what? The site you all are thinking of is www.MMORPGdot.com. The most MMORPG.com has to do with IGE is a friggin banner. I swear I love watching all you act all high and mighty. When you don't know the first thing about what's going on. These forums better then mmorpg.com's? LOL Yeah maybe if you like living with Hitler or something to that effect.
by Roin
BAHAHAHAAHAHAhahahahahahahaha *cough* *cough* *splutter*
Name and Address ???
Well Id like to see you spend the airfare to come to Australia and bug me over anything Ive posted. Australian courts would be more likely to throw the pair of us in jail for wasting their time with this BS! Hell I could use a US or Euro holiday. Sue me and pay for my airfare and Ill gladly come out there and giggle while you try and construct a valid argument in court...
Too damn funny
+-+-+-+-+-+
"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
-+-+-+-+-+-+
"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
.. Actually you may need to do a little research into American Law... You can find most of these cases online.
Bidbay.com v. Bruce Spry, Jr.
B160126 (Cal. Crt. App., March 4, 2003)
The court upheld the plaintiffs motion to carry on with the case in which the defendant made false claims about the company and the owner. The thing about American Law is that it is well based on precedent. The precedent set forth in this case is that a Chat Room or Public Forum is an entity that is clearly within the realm of Public Interest. That being said, any claims or "posts" that are made come under the jurisdiction of the public realm. Because these forums are public, this means that anyone can come along and read them. The plaintiff was allowed to sue based on the fact that these false claims could potentially harm the public image of the business.
As in Bugman's case, the claims of credit card fraud without any viable proof definately counts as libel and in the state of California, backed up by no precedence of the Supreme Court, could definately be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Stephen J. Barrett, et al. v. Ilena Rosenthal
A096451 (Cal. App. Crt., 1st App. Dist., October 15, 2003)
This court case would apply to anything that is posted on MMORPG.com. They have the responsibility to remove any statements of malice or defamation, or at least show attempts to prevent such occurences in the way of providing warnings, deleting posts, or banning users.
There were a ton of other court cases, but they mostly got repetative and came up with the same conclusion: The burden of proof rests on the plaintiff. They have to prove that the defendant "acted with malice." Sometimes its hard to do off of just one post, but a string of posts provide a much better chance of establishing "clear and convincing evidence." Claims of credit card fraud and posts like "this is what I heard from my friend. It just proves that Mourning is a scam" tend to denote malice and that the defendant acted with the "intent of defaming the plantiff."
However, the question of jurisdiction comes in to play. Now, there are several avenues to pursue in this situation. The dev team, Egomancer et al. is located in Romania, HOWEVER, the publisher is located in the United States. The boards fall under the ownership of Limitless Horizons LLC. This means that whichever state the company is registered as an LLC in, would become the home jurisdicition for the court and for the lawsuit to be filed in.
Being in Romania, the dev team could technically file in the home state of the defendant or the home state of the user's ISP. Doing things internationally becomes a little tricky, but this also opens up the courts to be incredibly flexible.
Most people think that they can hide behind the fact that they are in a different country, but thats not always true. European countries tend to be a little more protective, but because the US relies more on its State Supreme Courts rather than its Federal Supreme Court ... it becomes a bit more fluid. Its much easier to extradite a case out of the US, than it is to try and go after someone in another country.
Heh, its okay, I go to college for this stuff. I love politics
That case you cited appears to be from a State Court and not a Federal one. Further such rulings go against what the Supreme Court has said. Since you like looking of precedence you can go find it yourself. If it were possible to really prosecute people for what they say over the net I think out court systems would be more clogged.
In addition it would be impossible to sue him for libel. Libel is when you do it in print. Since the internet is typed it is still considered a conversation and so if anything he would be guilty of slander and not libel. However if you look at US courts it is almost impossible to get a judgment for libel or slander. That is why it is such big news when someone in Hollywood wins against the tabloids.
The first big rulling came in 1996. Here are some excerpts:
The Internet is an international network of interconnected computers...[which] now enables tens of millions of people to communicate with one another and to access vast amounts of information from around the world. The Internet is a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication...Taken together, these tools constitute a unique medium known to its users as cyberspace"located in no particular geographical location but available to anyone anywhere in the world. With access to the Internet...tens of thousands of users are engaging in conversations on a huge range of subjects. It is no exaggeration to conclude that the content of the Internet is as diverse as human thought.
The record demonstrates that the growth of the Internet has been and continues to be phenomenal. As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.
Right there you can see a problem in prosecuting. First it would need to be slander. Second since it is not in any one geogrphic area who has juristiction?